For my part I have a 17" laptop that is almost exclusively for home office use, a 11" chromebook for meetings or light work away from home, and an 8" tablet for entertainment and the odd emergency ssh session (I can fix servers over ssh from my phone too, but it's not exactly a fun experience).
The way I see it, there's no single form-factor that'll keep me happy, so I'd rather go for multiple.
I don't think people will ever agree on a single screen size or what other specs actually matters (e.g. I do have an SSD in my laptop, but quickly realises it doesn't really matter what type of storage I have, because I boot, I start Chrome and a bunch of terminals + ssh sessions, and then I rarely touch disk again; meanwhile other people load and store massive files regularly)
15" is perfect for all-around use. Plug in an external monitor or two and you won't notice the difference between 17", and it's still plenty portable in any bag that holds more than a tablet.
I used a 15" for years, and I'll never use a 15" again. Plugging in an external monitor was a workaround that helped when I was at a desk, but much of the time I much prefer to have my laptop actually on my lap in a comfortable chair or on the couch, where external monitors is not an option.
And it's still way too big for my travel needs. Yes, it fits in my bag, but I regularly have other things I want to take with me too.
So back to my point: It depends on your usage pattern.
I wouldn't be able to use the 11" chromebook, especially coming from a 17" screen.
Regarding the 11" I sort of agree - it's for note taking in meetings and the occasional use on trains etc., not for anything that requires very frequent use. I only went that small exactly because I don't need to use it very often. If I did more meetings, I might have used a somewhat bigger one.
I don't think we'll ever see a single form factor dominate as such, but a single device that can shift between form factors simplifies things a lot, I think that's the future.
My current laptop "only" has a full hd screen, but it was well over half the cost of my not-at-all-cheap custom build laptop when I bought it, and I expect to spend a similar proportion of the cost of my next laptop on an above average screen (edit: which will mean at a "4K" 17" screen, most likely)
I'm all for a single computing device, but not a single screen size. I don't think we'll ever settle on a single screen-type until/unless we have good enough head mountable screen replacements.
Sure, but how much value do you get from that? Weight matters, diagonal matters, but thickness alone makes very little difference unless we're talking about something too thick to fit into a satchel.
> and more powerful at most price points.
I don't think that's true? The top and bottom end specs are pretty similar IIRC (same RAM, similar processor, similar resolution...), except for the Surface having a touchscreen, and the price points are mostly higher for the MacBook.